A World of Delicious Design

Month: December 2014

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What an interesting experience this has been. There were those who expressed doubt in the beginning, but I stuck to my guns and called upon the village and the village answered loud and clear. The crowdfund on indiegogo.com is now complete with 105% funding so far with a week yet to go on the clock. For those who wanted to get in on the perks I made available during the campaign, those are available for a limited time….until January 7th. After that, the site goes inactive and the perks go away.

The level of commitment people have shown for the campaign has been nothing short of inspirational. It helps to show me the kind of support there is here for the arts not just locally, but all over the country. Donations and perks were snatched up by people in California, Washington State, New Jersey, Alberta Canada, North Carolina, and Virginia. This bodes very well for moving forward into the next phase of the studio’s operation. With over two dozen people asking if they could come blow glass during the Fall, it has been word of mouth and fond memories of the fun folks have had in the studio in the past that have kept them inquiring even when the studio was temporarily shuttered. The good news is that hot glass will be back in the New River Valley!

My thanks go out to my 60 donors and even more who shared the status of the campaign on their Facebook pages. All of this resulted in building awareness and enough buzz to get me where I am with full funding. With all of your help, I will finally get to light the lamp!

In the days to come I will be busy ordering the supplies needed for the campaign and getting the furnace back online. I will be setting up appointments for people who chose as their perks and opportunity to blow their own glass as well as making a slew of the Gaia Lamps, which was the center of this funding effort. These pieces will be marketed nationwide and sold through craft galleries across the U.S. I will be announcing a party for the backers to the campaign soon where we will get to light the lamps, eat, drink, be merry and blow some glass! Tentatively the date scheduled for this is the weekend of January 24th beginning in the evening. Check my facebook page Stafford Art Glass for more details.

I began my crowd funding effort on Indiegogo.com a few weeks ago, and the clock is ticking away, and I thought I’d take a moment and update you on this holiday-straddling fund raising effort. While it seeks to launch a new product, the reach of this effort goes beyond just the launch. It opens a studio that has had more new designs coming out of it than ever before, and has been limited by the ups and downs of the economics of this past year. There was a furnace door that literally fell apart in January of this past year that forced the closure of the studio, and then the loss of some courses I normally teach each semester at the local University set me back financially such that I never fully recovered enough to fund the re-opening of the studio at the busiest time of the year. Lots of people have been asking when will they be able to come blow glass again? “It was so fun! We can’t wait to bring more of our friends when you reopen!” has been the refrain from many people. But what to do? If I could not do it, could my fans and friends help? Could the power of the crowd, the village, the grass roots do it? Could there be enough people out there who think this is a cool enough thing that they’d be moved to get behind it…even if it meant only sharing it on Facebook?

The result was to reach out and make this a community effort. Opening the studio will also mean that locals will get to come and learn about glassblowing by blowing glass themselves. I have had many poeple ask about this yearly tradition. I have been putting them off and also suggesting they support the campaign so that their donation might do double-duty; helping open the studio AND allowing them to take their donation and apply it to a mini class or workshop. For those who do not want to blow glass themselves, just having the furnaces running means you can watch as objects of beauty take shape before your eyes.

My campaign, which is on Indiegogo.com has a number of analytics that lets me see where my donations are coming from. I have had just under $400.00 worth of donations come from this blog platform. Facebook has thus far been heads and shoulders above the rest with about 1K in donations coming from my business page and personal page. My own contribution to gathering donations seems to have gotten first place. These are sources that came to Indiegogo by way of an email from my friends or family. I have had about a thousand visits of the campaign since it began. I get to see where page views are coming from, and the most is from the U.S., but Ireland and Great Britain is in line, with France, Italy, and then a long tumble of other views from all over the world. A handful have been from Russia. It has been interesting and educational. People are looking for the next big things to fund, obviously.

Currently I am at 60% funding. I have 40% yet to go. the campaign ends on the 7th of January and honestly, the campaign has surprised me every step of the way. I have been bewildered, mystified, frustrated, and elated, all at different times.

Frustration has come in the form of people not understanding how it is that I am not wanting their money bu their willingness to show that they think the campaign is worthwhile. Really. With 30 people all thinking this is worthwhile, they are all sharing the news and helping to build a network of interested people. Do the math; 30 people with an average of 350-450 people on their facebook friend list all seeing news of the campaign = 10,500-13,500 people . You can see how quickly the numbers add up. And the donations come in. With numbers like these, you don’t need BIG donations, you just need smaller ones when the reach gets this big. I have been nudging and asking and cajoling people who want to do a story on this work, but so far, there have been no takers. But as my advice was given, I am not taking anything personally. I am on to the next opportunity to find what will work. And its working. This is truly a community effort, although the community has emerged as being all across the world, all over our nation and into Canada. I have been sending out press releases, I have been on the local news (links to the story below). It has been very educational. If nothing else, I have expanded my reach, done a lot of networking, and done a kind of marketing I have never done before.

There is more to go. Will you share news of this on your social media? Check out my Facebook. I have shared a few pictures of glass that has been made by members in my local community. Its been fun. I do a lot of outreach. I offer classes at an affordable level that are fun and educational. I have had every size kid there is from the youngest being 5 years old to the oldest being 91.

So here is the campaign link to see the perks you can still order from the campaign! Check me out on Facebook, too!

I am in the midst of a crowdfunding campaign to raise resources to make repairs and get my studio operational so that I can make and launch a new product, which is a fusion of art glass with lighting. This is a grassroots effort with national reach. The Gaia Lamp which this project funds will get works into the hands of galleries of fine craft all across the United States. The campaign is a fixed campaign, which in crowdfunding lingo means that this is an “all or nothing” effort. I have a goal of $5,600.00 for this project. If I fall short, donations, which are being held by the campaign platform indiegogo.com, will be returned. That means I am under the gun and on the clock.

Getting the word out is huge for campaigns like this. I have tried to impress my family and friends with the thought that I am less concerned with donation and much more with their being willing to share updates of the campaign to friends. When I have three friends that share my news on Facebook, for instance, the views of my posts will double and triple. Imagine if I could get twenty people doing this on a regular basis! This is something I have termed “Virality” and is what makes small things become big things. And not a penny is spent; it is leveraging the power of the internet. So to do that, let’s talk about what is so cool about all of this….

I am a maker of fine craft in the American Studio Glass Movement. This is one of the newest establish craft movements in the U.S. which began in 1965 when Harvey Littelton taught the first graduate program in glassblowing. My teacher was one of Harvey’s students. I was lucky to learn with Bill in the sunset of his career teaching at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. This movement has brought new ideas, new forms, and new energy into the craft movement. It continues to grow, too! This is really something for a medium that is sooo ancient! I am also part of the American Craft Movement, something built on small studios that are keeping the old traditions alive in a world soaked in machine made objects. Cheap and useful, these objects lack the human touch, the sense of design and delight. Have you ever felt what a blown tumbler feels like in your hand? Okay, you have never felt one of MY tumblers. I make them ergonomic and intimate to the touch. Everyone notices the difference. Customers speak of my tumblers always sitting dirty in their sink; they are the go-to object. It is easy to just say that American Craft is overpriced stuff, and it entirely misses the mark. We have been dumbed down by cheap goods.

During my campaign I have partnered with a local gallery to help spread the word. After a reporter had been to my studio last year to blow glass, she caught wind of the campaign and spread the word to one of the reporters where she works and I got a call about doing an interview for the campaign. That interview happened yesterday and aired on the late news. Being able to get this kind of coverage is big and has the potential to push the campaign forward. Every eye, every voice, every heart who wishes to extend the reach is what is needed.

Right now the campaign is at 53%. THIS is very good! I am very pleased with the progress so far. Surprised, actually. But this is also the point where many campaigns lag or slow. We are also coming up against Christmas, too, which is probably going to be like a week-long dead spot. And I anticipated this, which is why the campaign is going until January 7th.

The interview went pretty well, all in all. I sought to emphasize the grass roots effort, how this campaign will happen by every person willing to share a status or reblog a post. Perhaps in a bid to grab attention and raise awareness, the threat of a Grinch was added into the mix. Times have been hard this year, no doubt, but its not something that brightens hearts. What does, is my willingness to be as resourceful as I can be and continue to move forward after difficulty. Triumph of the human spirit.

So here I am and I am reaching out to let you know that this very cool thing is happening. You can be a part of it. If you want to share, that would be great! If you want to write, I am all over it. If you want to give, I would point you toward the campaign site to decide if you would like a perk. There are lots of them!

I have an E-book I call “The Guide” which is a compilation of all of the tips and hints I have given my customers over the years about how to clean and care for glass. This includes things many people don’t know, like how glass cleaners aren’t even used by many glass workers. Wanna know that secret mix? Or how about a way to clean glass that uses NO cleaning compounds at all and is highly effective? The Guide also shows you how best to light your artglass for a variety of situations. I show how you can decide and size a room for your glass without having to plunk down the money for a contractor. I show you ways that you can do this in an exact way, simply and with a minimum of expense. I include historical facts about glass and I also go into the chemistry of glass in plain language in order to help you to better understand why blown glass IS different from other commercially made glass. Includes diagrams and photos. 27 pages. Available for a $2.00 donation.

There are many other perks that include glassblowing. I had someone today asking if they could come blow glass for a day class. I suggested we settle on a price for it and that he consider paying for it by donating to the campaign, explaining his perk would be a class that he and three others would set up. If the campaign made it, great. We would look forward to a class sometime in the next two months. If not, he would not be out anything. In fact, giving to the campaign would move me ever closer to my goal. This is how a crowdfund is a win-win. It is the kind of thing that doesn’t just give for one person. It can give a multitude of times. I would urge anyone thinking about a day in the studio blowing as much glass as humanely possible and learning more stuff than you could ever believe, to contact me before donating so we can work out the details. If you are out of state, I can also arrange to have you picked up from our local airport in Roanoke. The possibilities are endless. You can quite literally make your own perk; it is worth it to me, but let’s talk to make sure we are all on the same page.

So this is why the recent interview was a big deal in my area. The local news did it, and I

Brie Jackson in Matrix Gallery taking an obvious selfie.

am incredibly blessed that they did! Newspapers have been contacted, press releases have been sent out. For now I am relying on the power of the press and media to help me. So far, though, half of the effort has come directly through the internet and by sharing emails and links with friends and even family.

So if you would like to see the interview you can go HERE. To go to the campaign itself you can go HERE. You can use indiegogo’s share tools to share the campaign. You will discover and learn and find out if this is something that this is something you want to get behind. It could be something that you could crow about; you got to be a part of it!

I have been working on a guide for my inquisitive customers who have wanted to understand why blown glass is different from regular factory made glass. The guide will explain the physical properties of glass without getting bogged down in technical lingo.

The guide will explain best practices for the cleaning of glass and answers such questions as…..”can I put my glass in my dishwasher” with an answer that might surprise you!

The guide will help to explain how to store and display glass and what impacts glass the most in terms of its physical durability. Can you display glass outside and how is this done safely?

There is a section on lighting glass, with a number of useful tips for everything from large display pieces, platters, vases, sculptures, and paperweights. The guide explains the differences between fluorescents, incandescents, as well as L.E.D. lighting heads that have recently flooded the market.

This will be a quick read, easy to understand, and very useful for anyone who wants to put their glass in its best light. Written by a professional with nearly two decades of lighting glass professionally for product marketing as well as in the gallery. Help put my knowledge to work for you.

The guide will be available during my fundraising campaign on indiegogo for a limited time for a donation of just $1.00! In PDF format, anyone will be able to access this guide for use on the run, at home, or while in the field.

Look for the launch announcement here but get it on indiegogo.com once the announcement is made. The Care And Feeding Of Blown Glass, by Parker Stafford.

Parker Stafford, Owner and founder of Stafford Art Glass in Newport, Virginia, launches his crowdfunding campaign Lighting The Gaia Lamp to bring a new innovation in art glass and lighting to market. Normally Parker is accustomed to funding projects himself, but after a series of changes in his year financially, it has caused him to look differently at how funding is procured to bring new products to market. If the maker of the next new electronic gadget can raise thousands overnight, what keeps a designer studio in the New River Valley from business as usual? It was time to go back to the drawing board and think big so he could take the project large. It was time to leverage the power of the crowd now available to us courtesy of the internet.

The campaign centers on a line of work that was first designed in 2003 and has been in production for close to a decade. The glass, originally called “Rare Earth” is painted with the fire and intense heat of the glass artisan’s language that melts and makes a thousand small elements into one, in the fire of the furnace. This is a fire that is so hot that if you stand in front of it longer than a minute, your clothes will start to smoke before bursting into flame. You think I am joking. You might wonder, then, how it is that a glassblower could ever coax objects of crystalline beauty from such an extreme environment. It is a good question. But to understand this, you have to learn a little more about what Parker is doing here, because this is an even bigger mystery.

It is like a poet who bids the earth speak. It seemed something big enough to suggest Greek legends or myths. The name came as he hooked up the first vase. A light, literally, was lit in his mind.

“Rare Earth” is a complex and stirring design that employs a palette of golds, browns, and reds. The proprietary process that Stafford uses as the blow pipe is slowly but continually turned, results in a level of dimension that takes place within a thickness of glass that is less than 1/32 of an inch! It took him years to gradually grow and develop this design over the years, so what’s hinged into this work is a lot of back story work in the studio. The glass pieces that he makes in this line are much thicker than that, but this is the color layer that makes the clear glass what it is. It is an example of what this glass artisan is able to do to make his glass sing. When I tell him about this he smirks and says, “My favorite book of Native American speeches was entitled “Songs Of The Earth” and made a big mark on me early on in my high school days.”

It is like a poet who bids the earth speak. It seemed something big enough to suggest Greek legends or myths. The name came as he hooked up the first vase. A light, literally, was lit in his mind. Gaia was the goddess, the mother of us all, the earth itself.

So instead of the lighting pieces being called “Rare Earth” he called the Gaia Lamp. No factory on the planet can make these like Stafford does because how he approaches each one. Instead of being punched out of a mold, he explains that they are like children; each born from the same lineage, but each free to be individual enough to be identified. All are family, and none are mere copies of the other. When you do this, you bring a life to an object, Parker explains, and we have this long-lived feeling about objects containing power, whether they be the medicine pouches of the Native American Shaman or Catholics with reliquaries built from gold and precious stones. People explain how they were healed from touching a relic or a medicine bag being shaken in their direction. We just believe, universally, that objects can be endowed with a power beyond their owner.

Parker does not suggest that such magic will happen with his work, no, but a subtler kind of magic is at work. A few days after considering the campaign publicly a friend from California walked into a diner in midtown Manhattan and stood face to face with one of the earliest pieces the artisan had ever made. “She took pictures and posted them on my Facebook page. I took a look and sure enough, I remembered the piece as some of the very first pieces in the line. It felt like an interesting synchronicity to me. It suggested that somewhere in here was something important.” The person who saw them recognized them because she had one of his vases from the same line. She had also lit her piece using a candle, which spoke to the universal need to light these pieces up.

It is the earth, he explains, surely, but unlike any earth you have seen. It is like the earth that we each dream about, the earth that we FEEL. It speaks to you of the soul of earth, of our world, a deep part of our experience, the artisan suggests. Because it is invested in this kind of effort, this level of thought and blood and fire and sweat and love, these things tend to show, to reveal themselves.

Like the truth, this cannot be held back for long. Even great ideas, long forgotten, tend to be dug back up and celebrated in later generations. This one slice of the Earth’s story is not one that we should allow to drop through the crust and into memory, Parker insists. Rather, it should be like a thought that raises a memory within us. In each of us. It is the knowledge that the earth is precious, foundational, and important to all of us. What if you could make that earth sing? Would that be a song that you would be interested in hearing? What if that song were as true as it could be? Parker explains that in making these pieces he has done this. He has made the earth sing. Each time a piece is made. I can’t even begin to explain how different these pieces are from commercially made objects looking over his shoulder as he goes through his computer to show me the images that he has of this line.

When lit, the song becomes so much more pronounced. All of this got started when a client and friend who had been at the studio wondered what one of his Rare Earth vases would look like lit. Parker knew how they would look like, he had seen it many times before. He had not felt like he could afford the time and money to sink into the project. “It will look great….I knew that…..and putting that vase up to the lights in the gallery put any question to rest.” The client asked him what it would take to light this vase. He explained the process quickly. “Do it” she said.

Last month Parker lit the first of these vases and the result was nothing short of amazing. Then a funding campaign wrapped itself around the effort. Times have been hard for this artisan of the New River Valley. It was just a few years ago that the economy caved in on itself. Resources grew scarce. He was rebuilding his life after a shoulder injury a few years took him out of the glass game for a full year, doctor’s orders. Parker does not paint on canvas. He reminds us that he paints on canvasses of molten lava, a silicate material we call glass. At 2100 degrees farenheit, he artfully casts the colors so that they last for the ages. Everything about doing this is expensive. The rewards, he offers me, also match the cost. Treat glass like how it is treated in factories and it loses its lovely potential, but bring it into the studio and give it clarity and love and humility, and it will show you more than you ever dared possible. It is evident that Parker knows. A selection of his recent works are included at the end of the post so you can begin to get an idea about where his skill and artistry take him.

Standing at 7 inches for the small and 12 inches for the large, respectively, the two sizes of the Gaia Lamp that Parker has been working on, will be made available through his campaign on indiegogo. A link is included at the end of the post so you can check this out.

He has another form, though, something that he currently does not have a sample for that is worth mentioning. Hands waiving in the air, what he describes to me is a round globe instead of a tall statue of a piece. This globe has all the colors of its taller sisters, but swells with a life that showers the room with something that feels like healing light. He calls this one the Gaia Globe Lamp. He does not want to make a copy of a salt lamp which was heavily marketed and even oversold. He wants something that will be….different. The effect that this warm light has on us, he says, is perennial. Listening to him and looking at him sketching the form, I imagine a hypnotic shape that could be hard to pull away from. I ask him when he plans on making this shape. He explains that he has made many of them, but they were never turned into lamps. He will make the first samples as soon as the campaign is funded. In fact, this piece will go with a group to galleries all across the nation. He already has galleries interested in carrying the work before the campaign is even into its first week. It feels comforting to me and I say so.

“That is because this type of light IS healing,” Parker points out, explaining that while he was putting the campaign together he stumbled upon an article about the healing effects of light. It was in a study funded by the Harvard Medical school and it had to do with the effects of blue light on humans.

The Harvard study (Source) looked at the effect that blue light from televisions, computer screens, and L.E.D. lighting had on humans. The study identified that blue light is what keeps humans alert, which is fine when you want to stay awake, but what happens when you provide this same light at a time when the body depends on getting the right signals telling it that it can rest? By staring into computer monitors, Parker explains, we have extended that exposure, and the results are startling in that it upsets our sleep cycles and has effects on our endocrine system, the governing body of glands that are identified as being related to healing and growth. “Blue light suppresses the production of melatonin in the body,” Parker explains, ” and this has two main effects according to this study. It makes it hard for people to sleep well. It messes with our blood sugar levels. People in the study began to show what were described by the doctors as pre-diabetic states. Changing the light intake from blue to reds and golds changed all of that.” This is a cautionary tale partly about how we use our technology but also how we take care of ourselves. If the quality of the light has such an effect on us, then it begs a big question…

Holding his lamp in my hands, I feel its comforting swell in shape, its tapering neck. It is sleek, contemporary, but, as the artisan points out, is based on forms he saw in the earliest vessels ever made out of glass: his shapes are based on ancient middle eastern forms. They seem contemporary because they are so classic in their shape

Sitting back in his chair, he levels his gaze and admits, “I am not here to tell you that my lamp will heal the world. No. But look, warm light will have its effect. It seems coming across this article was a simple case of perfect synchronicity.” Talking about his lamp he explains that our reaction to many subtle phenomenon is rooted in how it impacts us physiologically even if we are not realizing it being the distracted beings that we all seem to have turned into. Parker smiles and explains, “It is a great reason to make your world more beautiful by filling it with what might very well be a therapeutic effect from the light that it produces; a bonus! And you are supporting a small business, the little guys and gals who make cool stuff and dream big. Why wouldn’t you get excited about being a part of a dream like this?”

Our voices get quiet as we sit in his darkened study, the lamp gently illuminating the room. “It’s a different kind of light!” I remark. And it is different. It is like fire.

Holding his lamp in my hands, I feel its comforting swell in shape, its tapering neck. It is sleek, contemporary, but, as the artisan points out, it is based on forms he saw in the earliest vessels ever made out of glass: his shapes are based on ancient middle eastern forms. They seem contemporary because they are so classic in their shape. It has more weight than other vases, which were more like a leaf. This piece has some heft to it. Parker points out that the base is close an in thick, explaining, “I had to drill through that in order to sneak the light kit into the vase so it did not take up a lot of space.” Sure enough, a single cord comes snaking out of the base where a toggle switch is positioned a few feet away. The cord is nine feet long and all materials are heavy duty for long life. The design is simple, straightforward, and this makes changing the bulb easy. With a flick of the finger, the vase burst to life. Its marvelous. Our voices get quiet as we sit in his darkened study, the lamp gently illuminating the room. “It’s a different kind of light!” I remark. And it is different. It is like fire. You can’t help but continue to gaze into it. It is hypnotic in the same way that a fire keeps your attention and holds it.

Parker smiles as he takes the vase in his hands and holds it in his lap. “I can’t for the life of me figure out why someone wouldn’t want to see something like this come to life.” We turn the light out and the night sky surges in around us. The moon, a sliver, hangs in the sky. The room feels five degrees cooler. It was time to leave the room. He agrees and offers to make a particularly strong cup of coffee, a roast he insists is low on caffeine and is roasted and sold by a local company just down the block from his home.

We talk about the nuts and bolts of this thing as we sip our coffee.

The campaign seeks to raise $5,600 in just five weeks. It is an ambitious effort. “The budget came out to this amount when all of the stamps and shipments were counted. There is no use doing something half-way” Parker explains. “To do this will mean that I was able to shake the trees and wake some people up to this opportunity to become part of something cool. I am learning who will help and who wont. There is no judgement there, its just effort, the same way a river will flow. I am not interested in taking anything personally. But I need the help of the people who will see this and the people who will see this because it has been shared, spread around the planet a little.” We talk about old lessons about getting caught up in the story of others. He points out that our “glitches” as he calls them exist when we put value on what other people do based on what they value. “You have to simply find someone who is like you are. It is like striking a bell and finding that every bell that gets ‘struck’ by this sounds the same. I am looking for that reaction. It is a resonance.”

If you are a reporter, call me. Let’s talk. I have a story waiting for you if you are ready.

“I will mobilize thousands of people all to help with this effort. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to say that you were part of making the Gaia lamp into a national phenomenon?” Parker is looking for people who have this kind of vision. He says he is seeking recruits, believers who will spread the word. He points out that he would rather have a hundred people all sharing his story on facebook and email than a hundred dollars coming from one person. The value of the masses clearly begins to clarify as he shows me the numbers for other campaigns. It is a big numbers game, and those who succeed are those who have been able to leverage the internet in the right way. “One to two percent of all the people who I contact will be interested in actually donating. With numbers like these, I need many people who aren’t even interested in giving, but in helping. It is an entirely different approach to how money is raised. I began by taking a poll to find out who was willing to JUST spread the word.” Parker looks down at his cup and ads, “A lot of those people who were so interested in helping haven’t helped yet, so I am looking for greater spread. This is a busy time of year, so I understand. I am, though, taking all takers. If you like this thing, press the “share” button. Look at it; do you think it’s cool? Share it. Give a dollar, even. If you are a reporter, call me. Let’s talk. I have a story waiting for you if you are ready.”

It all begins with a dream. Endless gadgets that are currently being crowdfunded that are made that raise hundreds of thousands of dollars. One design project seeks a fraction of that. Hidden in the fractions, though, lies a great story. It is one that Parker is ready to tell in the language of fire and glass. The pipe turns as the fire rises, as the poet Sandburg suggested in his poem, this man turns sand into light. The hottest den of fire is where these pieces are made. Turning nice and easy and slow, Parker is giving life to something larger than this.

The campaign is now up and running and in the time it took to get over here to post this, I have gotten my first donation already for my campaign Lighting The Gaia Lamp on indiegogo.com.

For those not familiar, this is a crowdfunding campaign. It means that I am seeking the help of MANY people to give to support a project that I could not do without the help of many people who are willing to spread the word. In fact, the success or failure of this campaign will be known in the numbers. Maybe 1% of our population will be moved enough to give to this campaign, usually, so it is important that this 1% be reached. Doing that is a numbers game. It is how this will succeed. It will be about who knows about my campaign. I wont be able to do this without your help. My campaign is a FIXED campaign. I either meet my goal of $5,600.00 by January 7th, or I do not get funded. Any donations made to the campaign will be refunded by indiegogo/paypal who are the escrow holders for funds until the end of the campaign.

If you are a blogger, I encourage you to come and let’s do a trade: share a post for sharing a post! Or interview me if you do that kind of thing and put a story together about what I am doing. Like the arts? Like hot glass? This campaign has all of that and more. To learn the more, go to my campaign page here:

Art & Artisan Blogs You Should Check Out!

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Studio Hours & Info

Please contact me directly for studio hours: our work is seasonal and sometimes the studio can be down for repairs, for example. Some days we are blowing glass while other days we are running errands or away at a show. Let us know when you are free to come see us and we can work something out that works for you.